Vertical Gardening

If you are living in an environment where there is absolutely no space for any type of the usual horizontal type of garden, and no space for any type of container for you to grow a few plants outdoors, then you have to think alternatively and go vertical.

Vertical gardens essentially are creating a garden which will grow on an exterior wall. The original vertical garden resulted from the work of the French botanist Patrick Blanc.

Realizing that soil was not necessary for growing plants as long as they received sufficient mineral nutrients, he designed a structural framework with a waterproof backing and came up with a fabric to which the plants could stick to and receive their necessary nutrients.

This of course is very similar to hydroponics gardening in concept. A vertical garden is something more than simply having a piece of trellis fixed to the exterior wall and a few climbing plants intertwined around the trellis structure, if the right types of plants are selected entire exterior walls can be attractively decorated with lush greenery.

Although a framework is commonly attached to the wall for plant growing purposes an alternative style is to use sections of trough like rain guttering fixed to the wall in tiers thus facilitating the growth of different types of plants in each tier. Plants such as small vegetables, herbs and flowers are easily grown in such an arrangement.

Plants known as epiphytes are very amenable to vertical gardening, they are a type of plant which grows on the air if attached to a wall. The plants tend to grow on top of each other and support each other without robbing adjacent plants of nutrition.

Epiphytes do not need any kind of growing medium; they do not need watering and gain all of their nutritional requirements from the atmosphere which makes them an ideal plant for vertical gardening and they provide an attractive form of decoration for any exterior wall.